The Color of Dead Grass
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPDM slash, Harry and various others. Five people who were in love with Harry Potter, or could have been, and their colors of dead grass. COMPLETE.


**Title: **The Color of Dead Grass

**Disclaimer: **J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

**Pairings: **Harry/Ginny, Harry/Cho (one-sided), Harry/Hermione (one-sided), Harry/OFC (one-sided), Harry/Draco

**Rating: **PG-13

**Warnings: **References to canonical character deaths, angst

**Wordcount:** 2400

**Summary: **Five people who were in love with Harry Potter, or could have been, and their colors of dead grass.

**Author's Note: **The title comes from a line of Sappho's poetry as translated by A. S. Kline.

**The Color of Dead Grass**

_Yellow_

_That's it_, Ginny thought when Harry strode away from her. _I thought his colors were Gryffindor red and gold all the way through, but he's yellow._

The rage inside _her _was vivid scarlet and curling gold, like a lion's mane. Ginny knew she was a lioness, not the sheltered child her family believed she was. Was she a child when she stole her brothers' brooms and rode them? Was she a child when she faced Tom Riddle in the Chamber of Secrets? Was she a little girl when she reached out and kissed Harry Potter and laid hands on the dream that so many girls only secretly fancied?

No. But now she knew the little girl was what Harry saw.

He was leaving to go somewhere, some secret quest, with Ron and Hermione. Of course. They were always the close ones, the favored ones. Ginny ought to have known it wouldn't be any different, even when she began dating Harry. He _still _wouldn't tell her anything.

She had thought she would force an entrance into their charmed circle, finally learn what the Gryffindor Trio was hiding from the rest of the Gryffindors. But Harry joined Ron and Hermione on the grass in front of Dumbledore's tomb, and Ginny could almost see that ring glow around them, binding them to each other, shutting everyone else out.

Harry wanted someone who would wait for him? Ginny tossed her hair back over her shoulders and strode away in the opposite direction, walking, _padding_, like the lioness she knew herself to be.

Harry would have to find someone who was really a little girl at heart, someone who was as yellow as he was. Ginny was off to find her own adventures.

_Black_

Cho was out in the Leaky Cauldron with her girlfriends when she saw him again.

Him. Harry Potter. The man Cho was fond of telling her girlfriends had stolen her heart. She hadn't seen him since one of the many post-war celebrations when he stood up and made some speech or another.

He was leaning back now, a mug of butterbeer in his hand as he laughed at something Weasley said. Ron Weasley, Cho remembered with difficulty. She'd always had a hard time telling the Weasleys apart, except for Ginny, of course. She didn't see the need. None of them had been in her House, or dated her, or been her friend.

The women she was out with tonight, Mandy and Marietta and the rest, started giggling and tapping their elbows against Cho's legs and ribs, urging her to go over to Harry. Well, not Marietta. Marietta sat with her head bowed, her hair veiling her face. The Healers at St. Mungo's had finally managed to get the pimples decorating her face to go away, but Marietta had no reason to fondly remember Harry and his friends.

Cho shook her head in response to the prompting, but her eyes never left Harry. He was much handsomer than she remembered. Gone was all trace of the gawky little boy he'd been. He was taller, filled-out, his shoulders broad and straight instead of hunched, his face relaxed and sparkling with good humor. Cho thought she could go up to him and claim an old acquaintance, and he would act decent enough to her.

But now that she saw him again, she realized something.

What she remembered best of all from the brief time she dated him was the intensity of her grief for Cedric.

_That _was her real first love, the one who had stolen her heart, the one whose death had pressed her into her bed and made her eyes run with tears and made everything black in comparison. As black as Harry's hair, Cho thought now, running a finger along the rim of her mug. Blacker.

And she couldn't think of the time she kissed Harry without feeling that blackness creeping up on her.

It wasn't Harry's fault, maybe. He hadn't known how much Cho mourned Cedric. And he hadn't known that she'd gone around the last few years saying Harry was the thief of her heart.

But Cho could retreat from it, now. She couldn't think of him without the black, without him being under a shadow, without it spreading out from his hair and overcoming his face, until the laughter became a faint, mocking sound.

It wasn't Harry's fault, but he survived and Cedric died, and Cho couldn't forgive him for that.

So she supposed she'd learned something valuable as she turned back to her girlfriends and shook her head. Harry Potter wasn't the love of her life, the thief of her heart. She knew better now what she really needed to be happy.

"He was cuter when he was younger," she said.

_ Brown_

It wasn't like she hadn't _thought _about it.

But then, Hermione Granger would defy any normal woman not to think about it. Any normal woman who'd been through life and death with two handsome men and shared a tent with both of them and then one of them for days and nights during a Horcrux hunt, anyway.

Ron was her choice. He always had been, always would be. It had been years before Hermione could accept _why_. She'd always thought, when she pictured getting married as a little girl, that it would be to someone like her father, smart and accomplished, with his own business.

But she hadn't known about having magic then. It changed a lot of things.

Now, she knew that she'd chosen Ron because he was stubborn, could stand up to her, could argue with her instead of agreeing all the time, could give her a challenge, could give her an audience and a different kind of intelligence to compete against and struggle with. Harry might be smarter than Ron when it came to schoolwork—honestly, except in Defense, Hermione was hard put to choose between them—but he wasn't as interested in pushing back.

So, as they lay side-by-side in sleeping bags in the Forest of Dean, Hermione watched the shadows rippling across Harry's face and did think about it. Whether his lips would taste the same as Ron's—well, the way she _imagined _Ron's tasting. It wasn't like they'd actually kissed. Whether the slow way Harry smiled was ever any faster. Whether the passion and fury that blazed in Harry's eyes when he fought could transmute and turn into something different. Whether Harry would hold her and kiss her, or want to lie back and let her do all the work.

Hermione shifted a little. Maybe someone who would lie back and let her do some of the work sometimes _was _exciting.

But the more she thought about it, the more she decided it would never work. Harry was handsome and courageous and modest and her best friend, all qualities that helped. But when it came to _passion, _Hermione couldn't feel much of any color for him. It was all—brown. Imagining herself by Harry's side for years at a time didn't do anything for her, while the frustrations and the fascinations of being with Ron sparked color to life in her mind.

The difference between dead grass and grass on fire, Hermione decided at last. Not Harry's fault, but not something she could ever choose.

She did hope Harry would find someone who could feel the color in him, though. He deserved at least that much.

_White_

Athelia Grey had always hated her last name. It went too well with her appearance, which was washed-out, pale, with white hair that almost made her an albino. If it weren't for her grey eyes, she would be. As it was, the one sure way for her brothers to get a rise out of her was to tell her that they saw a bit of pink creeping into her eyes.

But when she bumped into Harry Potter—_Harry Potter_, of all people—the day she was coming out of Knockturn Alley with a book she'd purchased, he didn't seem to think anything about her looks. All he did was take her wrist in one hand, and meet her eyes, and ask, with the most importance anyone had ever put on anything Athelia said, "Did you buy that book in Knockturn Alley, miss?"

That was how Athelia learned she wasn't cut out for a life of crime. She looked down and whispered, "I just wanted to talk to my father."

No good story. No good lie. She held out the book wordlessly, after that. It was a necromancy book, and Athelia just wanted to see him one more time, tell her father she was sorry for storming out of home on the day he died, not coming back to see him one more time and say she loved him.

Gently, Harry took the book from her. Athelia didn't think of him as Harry at the time; that came later.

But not much later, because his gaze was just as mild when he looked at her and said, "There are other ways you can do that."

And he turned the book in to the Aurors, but he never reported her. And he accompanied her on a trip to her father's grave—he knew all about losing parents, didn't he?—and listened when she got drunk afterwards in the pub they went to and explained all about how frustrating her father could be, especially about her refusal to go on to advanced study after Hogwarts, but how she loved him anyway.

Harry listened to her, and bought her drinks, and met her a few more times. And one day Athelia leaned forwards and kissed him. If she was a bit drunk, she could blame it on that. She knew that he wouldn't hold it against her, no matter what happened.

Harry caught her hand, though, and held her in one place as she pulled back from the kiss. He shook his head. "Sorry. Can't do that. I have someone."

Athelia blinked, because she had never heard that, and she thought the papers would be all over it. "Who?"

She had to admit, she liked the smile he gave her then more than she'd liked the kiss. It was secret and thrilling, and made her a little flushed herself, not pale. "Sorry. I can't tell you that. They wanted privacy. You understand how hard it is to come by, dating someone like me."

"Well, _I _would be happy to date someone like you and have it in public," Athelia declared, although she didn't know if that was true.

Harry's smile turned a little sad. "Thanks. But someday it will be." He looked like he would charge a dozen dragons himself to make it happen.

Athelia told him farewell, and went home, and stood brushing her teeth in her dark bathroom. Her eyes caught a glimpse of something pale, and she didn't recognize it was her own hair and face, ghostly in the mirror, until a few seconds later.

She—didn't feel as pale as she usually did.

She could give thanks for that, at least, Athelia thought drowsily as she climbed into bed. Maybe she could never have anything with Harry, maybe her options in that direction would always be pale, but at least it helped her feel a little more comfortable with the way she was.

_Green_

Draco stirred and reached out to put his hand on Harry's face. Harry still breathed, soft and warm, beside him.

Good. Draco didn't enjoy the mornings he woke up alone.

He stood up and padded around the room, moving with assurance, here, and there, and everywhere, assembling his clothes for the day, and making sure that Harry's Auror robes hung in easy reach. He always forgot them and wadded them up somewhere, and then he went into work with the cloth wrinkled and hanging down, which Draco told him was hardly a credit to the hard-working Aurors he was supposed to be a part of.

Harry always laughed and dragged him into bed after he said that, which Draco had to admit was hardly incentive to stop saying it.

Draco went into the kitchen and started breakfast. A simple one—toast, eggs, a bit of bacon. Harry didn't like anything else in the morning. Draco used to eat a more luxurious one, but since he started dating Harry, he'd found that he was all right with simplicity himself.

Such a strange beginning, their dating. Draco decided that he didn't want to be a coward anymore after the war, and so he set himself to do a bunch of things that scared him. He would do them only once, and they didn't have to work. He could smile now when he remembered how much of a cowardly out he still left himself, ready to bolt and tell himself that it was okay because he'd done it once.

But one of those things had been asking Harry Potter out on a date. And the way Harry had stood motionless, eyes widening, so _green _that Draco had felt life and renewal sweep into him like the spring, was still one of his favorite memories, one he would have treasured even if the date hadn't worked out.

But it had worked out, and then another date, and then a secret kiss, and then a night spent together, and now here they were, three years after Harry became a full Auror, still together.

Draco knew that Harry would have liked to go public, and maybe someday he would be ready for that. But for now, he liked it this way, working through the shadows of his lover's kitchen, listening to the sound of Harry grunting and stretching awake in the bedroom.

He liked it green, like the color of Harry's eyes when he came into the kitchen and kissed him on the cheek. "Morning," Harry murmured, taking his seat in his pants, so that he wouldn't wrinkle his Auror robes.

"Morning," Draco said, and kissed Harry on the lips, ignoring the sharp tang of toothpaste that he had never liked—and honestly, who brushed their teeth _before _they ate?—before he moved to turn on the wireless.

Harry caught his wrist. Draco looked down at him, waiting. Harry looked anxiously up at him and said, "You think you might be ready to come out before the end of this year?"

Draco smiled a little. Maybe, maybe not, but with the greenery of Harry's eyes staring up at him, he could answer easily. "I think so."

"Great," Harry breathed, and stood to kiss him, and his eyes were shut tight and trustingly, and Draco was happy.

**The End.**


End file.
